


Crowded Onto the Galley Floor

by Semianonymity



Category: Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies)
Genre: Caretaking, Food, Found Family, Friendship, Gen, Grooming
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-31
Updated: 2014-10-31
Packaged: 2018-02-23 07:27:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,326
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2539409
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Semianonymity/pseuds/Semianonymity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The five of them--the Guardians of the Galaxy, criminal failures--share a meal on the galley floor after a long, <i>long</i> day.</p>
<p>A fic about found family, friendfamily, physical closeness and shared food.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Crowded Onto the Galley Floor

**Author's Note:**

> This came from a prompt! ...It ended up not really being what was asked for. I think I needed to figure out some more of the dynamics between them before I could move on to actual easy comfort.

“I've never been arrested for impersonating myself before,” Rocket said reflectively, looking up from the piece of fruit he was meticulously peeling, turning it over in fingers that were a little too long, a little too dexterous, to be paws. His knife was wickedly sharp, a tiny brutal thing.

“So that's where that knife went,” Gamora said, her tone sharp, just barely—it was layered over sleepy, pleased exhaustion.

“It was just laying around—”

“It was in a locked drawer!”

Peter smothered a yawn, rolling his eyes when Gamora grimaced at his mouthful of food. But he swallowed before he spoke. “Seriously, Rocket? I thought—”

“Well if she _wants_ it then she can just ask for it back!” Rocket snapped, like that was a reasonable approach to petty theft among friends. “You'd think I took something _important._ ” He wiped the blade clean, and handed it over, hilt-first, the small blade big in his hands, his hands dark against the green of Gamora's skin. It was followed, wordlessly, by a neat pile of peeled, cored and sliced fruit, Rocket looking away. A sort of apology.

“Thank you,” Gamora said, hesitating just a second before she took the plate. Her voice was a little odd—still unused to apologies at all. Not used to sharing meals, or personal space, but she handed Rocket the knife again, her hand wrapping loosely around his for a second. “I don't like you poking through my belongings, but you're—you can keep the knife.”

Rocket blinked. His expression went open and vulnerable, pained because of that vulnerability, just for a second—but he tightened his grip around the hilt and slotted it away, grumbling. “It takes all the fun out of it when you just _give_ it to me...”

“I am Groot!”

“Shut up, twiggy! I am—damn it, fine. Sorry I stole your knife Gamora.”

“I knew you were a sticky-fingered thief already,” she told him, her voice warm despite her words.

“Here,” Drax announced, flicking one of his own knives to Gamora, who caught it viper-quick. Peter yelped and ducked. “I would say Rocket's hands are furry, not sticky, but it is good for comrades-in-arms to share weapons.”

“No throwing knives around! Geeze, no wonder we got arrested—”

“We got arrested because of _your_ idiocy, Peter,” Gamora pointed out. And no matter how much ice was in her voice, she used his given name more and more.

“No, we got arrested because we're the worst damn heroes the galaxy's got,” Rocket said, with a proud smile that showed pointed teeth. “We're criminals—thieves, multiple murderers—”

“I am Groot.”

“—and Groot, and nobody believes that _we_ saved the world—”

“Because we're a fucking trainwreck,” Peter finished, stifling another yawn and then wincing when it jostled his severely bruised shoulder. “...Sorry I smuggled a gun into an art museum. And defaced a national treasure.”

“Are you kidding? That was fucking hilarious,” Rocket sniggered. Peter rolled his eyes and jostled him with an elbow—careful to avoid the awful scarring along his back.

“Thank you for the knife, Drax,” Gamora said, leaning around Peter to clap his shoulder. That left her pressed against Peter's side, and she didn't move away. Peter's eyes went round and startled, the same startled surprise he tried to hide at each kind gesture he was given.

“Here,” Drax said, holding up a slice of something Peter didn't recognize, a pleased expression on his face. “Try this.”

Peter looked at it doubtfully, but Gamora just leaned forward to take a bite from his fingers, strangely intimate—warm, close, and the way that Drax's face lit up was—startling. Murderer, criminal, grieving father and spouse, his fury and loss carved into his skin and visible in the raised red scars of his body, and when he smiled like that he looked _happy_. It was—Peter thought—cultural. Or it was just a Drax thing, which was believable, because they _all_ ranged from weird to weirder, but—Drax loved to share food. With them, at least.

So instead of reaching out to take whatever-it-was in his hands, he leaned in to take a bite too, shifting a bit closer to Drax, the unexpectedly smooth heat of his skin.

“Kinda weird,” he said, a little indistinct as he chewed. Gamora hissed at his manners again. “But I like it,” he finished, making a face at her.

“You like everything,” Drax pointed out, very seriously.

It left a slight shadow in Peter's expression. “I learned to eat what I could get,” he said flatly, and it was _Rocket_ who growled at that, hands clenching like he wished he was still holding the oversized gun he'd had confiscated from him, or any of his other weapons.

“That was a long time ago,” Peter said, taking another bite of the dried something-or-other meat they'd picked up at some point. Fresh fruit, tough green tubers that—they'd learned the hard way—Peter and Drax could only eat cooked, meat jerky: it was a meal of miscellaneous parts. They didn't often sit down to eat together, or at all, and it was tight with all five of them in the tiny galley of the ship, but—nice.

They'd learned early on not to take Peter's food. Drax loved to share, served what he cooked from a communal plate, and Rocket tended to make a meal that was at least half food from other peoples' plates, often leaving something else in return, and Gamora ate as wide a variety of things as possible but only in small amounts, sunning with Groot for the rest of her energy, and Peter would eat anything but got protective.

Drax had grown up loved. Gamora had been a weapon, an assassin—useless unless fed. Rocket had been valuable, and given a carefully balanced diet when he was being unmade and then made. Groot had grown up in the warm embraces of alien suns. Peter had had to fight for everything, until he'd proved he was worth something.

Now, Peter hesitated, before offering out his plate. “These seed things are good.”

Rocket snatched a few,and Peter smiled at him, a little on edge but slowly relaxing. His smile went wide and easy when Rocket handed him some of his small stash of candy, wordlessly.

Rocket also waited until Peter had taken a bite to look at Drax, all unbelievable innocence, to ask, “Hey, Drax, what are these things?”

“Wasp eggs,” he announced, popping one into his mouth as Peter blanched, before carefully swallowing his mouthful. He looked at his plate with regret, before shrugging and taking another bite.

Gamora was still frowning at Drax. “You're not eating enough,” she said.

“I've had my share,” he protested.

Rocket's ears pulled back, muzzle wrinkling into a snarl. “I'm smaller than your _head_ even though it's so empty it fucking echoes—”

“My head is not—”

“ _And so_ I don't need to eat as much as you do, you musclebound lump, and your fair portion doesn't look like mine!”

“I am Groot,” Groot said, straining to reach a plate of meat; Rocket handed it to him, after a confused blink, and then nodded significantly when Groot, just barely big enough to manage it, passed it to Drax.

“Don't make me force it down your throat,” Gamora said, a little thickly. “I've done it before.” She looked away—a long-dead younger sibling she no longer really remembered, reluctant to begin eating instead of just photosynthesizing, as many babies were.

“It's not like we don't have enough food,” Peter said, frowning as well. “Plus _someone_ , who might or might not be _Rocket_ , keeps on stashing food in my things! If we run out, we can just get some more. Buy it, not steal it.”

“You're no good to me if you collapse in the middle of a fight,” Rocket added, too much concern in his tone. “Groot's going to be too short to carry me for a while. Tell you what, I'll steal you whatever you want at the next port—”

“I thought we weren't stealing anymore,” Gamora said, not sounding particularly upset.

“I thought we weren't killing anymore either, and you didn't have any problem gutting that one guy in jail.” Rocket was smug when he was winning an argument, always.

“He was a threat,” Gamora said, and then fell silent. He'd only been a threat to Peter, who'd walked into trouble and hadn't managed to talk his way out of it, and to Rocket, who'd gone to his defense even though Groot was still too small to do much damage. Drax had broken his accomplice's neck. Peter had stolen the contents of their pockets, and Rocket has used that, and a few other salvaged things, to break them out of prison.

In the silence, Rocket finished his plate, and washed his paws, and then walked up Peter and onto Drax's shoulder, ignoring Peter's spluttered protests at the wet handprints he left. (But Peter didn't move to push him off.) And Drax waited until Rocket was settled on his shoulders, corded with muscle that barely remembered how to relax—but he was learning how to, again. So after Rocket had found a comfortable spot, tickling warmth against his shoulder and neck, he carefully moved until he was not just close to Peter but pressed up against him.

Peter let out a breath he'd been holding, unaware, and the last of the day's tension went out of him in a rush. His shoulders slumped, and with a small noise of relief, he let himself lean into the barrel of Drax's chest, then slide down so he was sprawled over Drax's legs. His thigh was still pressed close to Gamora's, on the other side. He was still kind of uncomfortable with the gesture, it was clear, and the posture wasn't at all comfortable, but the greater part of him was touch-starved.

“Ridiculous,” Gamora muttered, under her breath, making Peter tense, but—

She shifted his legs so that he was curled between her and Drax, her legs hooked over his and his head resting on the fabric of Drax's pants, so that she was pressed up against Drax's side. And when Peter reached for her hand, she let him take it.

“I am Groot?”

“I'll get you,” Rocket sighed, his tone long-suffering and his movements swift and almost eager, snagging Groot's pot—getting a little too big for him, Groot's branches waving in his face not helping—and then settling Groot in the middle of the tangle they'd formed.

“Peter drools when he's asleep,” Gamora said, very smug but also very quiet so she didn't wake him. Drax frowned at the growing damp patch on his pants, but didn't move at all. And Rocket, snickering, settled in again, this time in Gamora's lap.

“May I?” she asked, a little hesitant, and he shifted out of the cozy little ball he'd formed to glare at her—not sure what she was asking. “May I—not pet, but—”

“Yes, fine,” he said, wanting but not wanting—only barely willing to believe that it wasn't _petting_ , wasn't something done to animals. Only for these people.

“Would you be willing to braid my hair?” Gamora asked in a sudden rush, her fingers settling very lightly against his fur, and it was strange, in many ways, it had been years and years of no one, and then years and years of only Groot's twigs and leaves. It was strange, and it settled some part of him, lonely and aching. “I—was very young when. When I—it doesn't matter, I just never learned how to braid my own hair. I—you seem a better choice than Peter or Drax.”

“...can't promise what it'll look like,” Rocket said, more uncomfortable with _Gamora_ trusting him so close, at her unprotected back, claws near her neck, than he was with the actual request. “Drax had his little girl, he might—”

“If you don't want to, I—my apologies, it was an indulgent request!”

“I'll do it,” Rocket said, a little too fast because part of him, down at the bone, not a memory—not sharp like his memories had become—but something, distant and warm, remembered the drag of claws through fur, remembered curling up with others—almost like this, almost.

He never remembered this kind of trust. Until Groot.

“...I'll ask Drax, too,” Gamora said—Drax, who'd slumped, breath deepening into sleep, stirred just slightly at his name. (Before—before they saved the world—Drax never would have slept this deeply around them. Around Gamora, especially. Now, he had his hand resting against Gamora's leg, fingers just barely curled. Gamora's fingers carded slowly through Rocket's fur.) “I don't know if he will—”

“Worry about it at someone who cares,” Rocket muttered, meaner than he meant, but—

“I don't want to hurt him,” Gamora said, voice fragile, and young. She'd lost her whole family. He'd lost his.

“You won't,” Rocket said with finality, not sure if that was true—he knew _people_ so much less than the rest of them, and only saw the worst in almost everything—but he could believe, like this.

“Stop talkin' an' go sleep,” Peter mumbled, barely audible and muffled against Drax's leg, one eye cracked open in agitation, and Gamora had to smile.

She closed her eyes, settling back, but sleep was a while coming. ...It was a strange thing, trust, a bubble filling up all the empty space inside her, but it didn't hurt and it wasn't fragile—and it was shared, flowing through each point of contact, she could almost feel it as she drifted closer to dreaming, trust like infinite energy tearing them all apart but _peaceful_ , and it scared her not because it was an end but because it was a beginning, an open invitation, a new unknown life drawn out before her, five of them and a future that they—criminals, thieves, heroes, misfits—would shape.

-End-


End file.
